Torres del Paine
It was finally here: the beast, the event that made planning South America so hard, the reason for our REI registry and huge REI shopping trips. Torres del Paine! Multi-night trips in Torres need to be planned fairly well in advance, because it’s super popular and campsite reservations are mandatory. Thus, we’ve had our trip to the Torres planted as a stake in the ground for quite a while now. We’ll have another post discussing logistics and planning for this trip, this post will focus on our actual experience.
Look, I’m sorry, this is a long post. Really long. I had a ton of fun putting it together, but I won’t hate you if you just look at the pretty pictures. They are really pretty! Hopefully you’ll read along though, and be entertained and inspired to make your own trip to this incredible, beautiful place.
Torres del Paine is one huge national park among several national parks in Chilean Patagonia. There is plenty to do and see there, but two of the big attractions are two similar, overlapping multi-night trekking/camping trips: the “O” trek and the “W” trek.
The “O” trek starts at Hotel Las Torres and runs in a circle around the whole of the main section of the park. Hence, “O”. The “W” trek gets its name from the “W” shape the trails make, and includes the trails at the southern portion of the “O” trek. These are the sections from the Las Torres mirador, down and around to Campamento Italiano and up into the Valle de Frances to Britanico, then back down and continuing around all the way to Refugio Grey. The “W” is what we did.
There are many ways of tackling the W, but it’s frequently done as a 4-night, 5-day trek. It can be done from east-to-west (that is, starting over at the Hotel Las Torres), or west-to-east (starting at Refugio Paine Grande). We chose to do it from west-to-east.
Bottom-line up front: The W trek is an incredible, exhausting, frustrating, ridiculously scenic, beyond beautiful, brutalizing, totally worthwhile experience. Were we happy the whole time we were doing it? Absolutely not, not even close. Would we choose to do it all over again? In a heartbeat.
Day 1: Getting into the Park
For us, day 1 was simply just getting there and getting set up. With the way we’d organized the trip, we wouldn’t be doing any hiking this day, as the campsite is fully accessed by transportation.
Most people do do some hiking on this day, and so will get a 7am bus out of Puerto Natales to the park. Since we weren’t hiking, we also didn’t really have any time pressure, so we were able to take a more leisurely 11:30am bus. The bus ride is almost 2 hours to get to the park entrance, where you have to get off to register and pay park admission. The ride goes through typically scenic Patagonian countryside, then suddenly rounds a bend and gives you your first views of Torres del Paine. It looks nothing like anything around it: tall, craggy mountains clustered together, capped with snow, looming on the horizon like the epic conclusion to some fantasy novel. We compared it to Mordor.
Since we chose to do the trek from west-to-east, after paying admission at the entrance, we then re-boarded our bus and continued another 30 minutes or so to the area of Pudeto. From Pudeto, our next step was to take a ferry across Lago Pehoé to the Paine Grande refugio and campsite, where we’d be spending our first two nights. The ferry took about half an hour, driving into the teeth of the Patagonian winds. The ride was beautiful, over the milky-blue lake that gets its water from glacier runoff. The ride gives indescribably beautiful panoramic views of some of the most prominent features of the park: the Cuernos, the Valle de Frances and the Frances Glacier, which is perched high atop the massive Cerro Paine Grande.
The ferry lets out at Paine Grande campsite, and we moved to get checked in and set up our camp. This was tough because:
- Those Patagonian winds
- Uh, we’d never done this before… we’ve only set the tent up once, and it was in our living room
However! We crushed it. It took far longer than it should, I’m sure, as we fought with the wind, but we got our tent set up and, spoiler alert, it never collapsed! Go Sturm-Whites!
The campsite is large, crowded, and incredibly scenic, with the Cerro Paine Grande towering overhead, and the Cuernos just slightly further. Seriously, we woke up to this each day:
And this:
Yeah. Our first morning, we literally woke up to this stunning scene of the Cerro back-lit by the sun:
Sigh.
Cerro Paine Grande is at almost 10,000 feet of elevation, while our campsite is basically at sea level. Fun fact: it’s apparently only been climbed 4 times! Numerous other attempts have ended in tragedy.
We’d brought makings for a quinoa salad that would serve as our lunches each day of the trek, so after we got camp set up, we headed to the cooking area to cook it. The campsites in the park have indoor areas that you can set up your camp stove and cook, as they no longer allow open flame outdoors in the park, due to some fairly destructive fires that had been started on accident by campers. I’m telling you, those winds…
We set up our adorable camp stove and made our lunches for the week, then it was time for dinner. We’d bought dinner here for both nights ahead of time (like campsites, meals also have to be reserved). And turns out: it was great! First night was a huge piece of roasted chicken with rice, and we loved it.
The waits for showers were lengthy, and since all we’d really done all day was sit on buses and boats, we decided to forgo them and get to bed early. We had a long day ahead of us!
Day 2: A Long, Lovely Day-Hike to Glacier Grey
During the night the winds calmed, and we woke up to essentially stillness, which was great news. In less great news, we both pretty much slept like garbage. As I said, we’ve never done this before, it was gonna take some getting used to, this whole sleeping in a tent.
Erika mentioned in her last blog post how she can’t sleep in tents. We did a trial run with the tent back at home, after we’d moved all our furniture out, and halfway through the night Erika bailed and went and slept upstairs on the couch we still had in the house (don’t ask). Then, here we were, and we did indeed sleep like garbage… well, let’s just say I woke up pretty nervous about her mood.
But she was in a great mood! She woke up excited about the hike in front of us and generally positive about the whole camping experience so far. Go Erika!
We headed to the cooking area to cook our breakfast, then back to our tent to get our day packs together for the hike. The plan for the day was just a simple (but long) out-and-back to refugio Grey, to see the Grey Glacier. According to guides, it should be around 13 or 14 miles in total. We were staying at Paine Grande again, which meant we didn’t have to take our camp down. Even more importantly, it meant we didn’t have to carry our big packs!
This is going to remain a familiar refrain through this whole post… but have I mentioned we really have never done this before? Though I’ve done lots of day-hiking for years, including plenty of long, difficult hikes, I’ve never done any overnight camping. Erika’s never really done either. All this is to preface saying: it took us forever to get our stuff together and get out of camp. 10:20am is when we left! And we didn’t even have to take the tent down! Fortunately, at this time of year, there are almost 15 hours of sun in the day, so we shouldn’t be hiking in the dark.
(We took our headlamps just in case we were wrong about that)
The hike starts out quite easy, gently climbing away from the campsite. You start out on exposed terrain in a small valley, with short hills to your left, and the huge Paine Grande to your right. The first point of interest on this hike is the Laguna Los Patos, which isn’t noted on the map at the top of the post, but is only a couple miles from camp. Erika was leading as we rounded a corner approaching the laguna, and I heard her cry out:
“Oh my god, babe! Holy fucking shit!”
This kind of scenery would become commonplace as the week went on, but god, look at that! Like most of the photos we’ll put up here, the pictures don’t remotely do it justice. Those snowy mountains in the background feel epic, huge, and close, and you can’t see them at all until this moment you turn the corner and see this whole scene. You can’t really see it in the picture, but in the background amongst those snowy mountains, you can just make out the Grey glacier, our target for the hike.
We were pretty dumbstruck by the beauty of this area, and found it was a perfect spot to take a 15 minute break and have some trail mix.
To the First Mirador
The hiking is still fairly gentle after leaving Laguna Los Patos, on the way to the first viewpoint, or mirador, of the glacier. This area of the trail is pretty crowded–a lot of people do day hikes from Paine Grande to the first mirador. Once we got past that first mirador, the trail became considerably less busy.
Before getting to the mirador, however, you’re able to see the huge Lago Grey, which has that milky color due to the glaciers feeding it.
Shortly after, you arrive at the mirador, and get your first views of the Grey glacier, albeit from fairly far away:
Onward to the Glacier
The trail gets a good bit more difficult after this point, with steep alternating portions of up and down. With the difficult terrain, it’s a longish hike from the mirador to the Camp Grey. We thought the Camp Grey was our target for the day, as we thought the viewpoint for the glacier was at the camp. Turns out it’s a fair bit past the camp! We were hungry and wanted our lunch, but the camp isn’t really picturesque. We wanted to have lunch while we looked at a glacier. So we decided to continue on, hoping it wasn’t too far.
It kind of was–probably another 45 minutes or so. But we found it!
And we had lunch!
After lunch, we headed down further to get an even closer look at the glacier and the huge icebergs floating in the water nearby. Doing so meant scrambling over some awkward boulders that took a while, and also offered ridiculous photo opportunities.
It’s weird writing about it now, after the fact, since we’ve seen so many glaciers at this point. But holy shit, it was a glacier! And it was huge and amazing!
Back to our Camp
We turned around for the long return hike, none too excited about all the steep ups-and-downs we knew we had coming. We got back around 6:30 or so–so all told, 8 hours for the hike, not too bad. Fortunately we had the pre-purchased dinner this night too, so after grabbing a couple quick showers, we went for our excellent dinner. Then it was back to our home–our tent–to try to get some sleep and get ready for a tougher day of hiking the next day.
Day 3: A Grueling Hike to, and into, Valle de Frances
Sometime during the night–I’m not sure when, because I never checked the clock–our luck ran out: the Patagonian winds turned back on. It began as a breeze that rippled the tent canvas, enough to wake me up and get me worried about the clothes we’d left outside to dry. I noticed the shadow of Erika’s pants and shirt were no longer on top of the tent, so I went outside to find them. Fortunately, they were still right beside the tent. I briefly considered leaving them there–thankfully, I didn’t, and instead piled them into our vestibule, before getting back inside to try to get back to sleep.
No such luck: that slight, rippling breeze quickly turned into a gale. Our tent was getting pummeled by the winds in no time, testing the ribbing to its breaking point. There were multiple times during the night that a blast of wind would crush our tent and cause both Erika and I to suddenly sit up, simultaneously declaring “holy shit!”
When we came in on day 1 and set up our tent, we had very cleverly oriented it to reduce its profile in the wind. However, the mountain is even more clever than us, and the wind this night was coming at a different direction: our tent was getting it fully broadside. Seriously, I don’t totally know how it held. There were a number of gales that bent it down nearly to the ground, but it held strong.
And so, I’d like to take a moment to sing praises for our tent, the MSR Hubba Hubba 2-person tent. We quickly loved our tent, between its performance in the wind and the roominess it provided us. It was super easy to set up and take down, even in a windstorm. We also enjoyed having random travelers at the airport in Punta Arenas comment on how small our tent packed down, as Erika mentioned in our previous post. That’s right, we know what we’re doing! (We do not)
The MSR Hubba Hubba: Patagonia tested, Sturm-White approved.
Heading Out
Anyway, eventually the alarm went off and we “woke up”. The wind maybe wasn’t quite as strong as it was in the middle of the night, but it was still no fun. We trudged out through it to go cook our breakfast, and then it was time for the unpleasant task of tearing down camp.
We suck at this. Really, we do. It took us forever to pack away the sleeping bags, deflate the sleeping pads, and put everything into our packs. Somehow, of all this, the easiest thing was taking the tent down in the windstorm. But it all took forever. Guess what time we left camp? Yep: about 10:20! We’re the worst.
The plan for today was a slight ramping up of difficulty from the previous day. The total hike would be about the same distance–close to 13 miles–but the first 5 miles would be with our full packs on, before we could shed those in favor of our day packs. If you’re following on the map at the top of this post, our plan was this:
- Hike from Paine Grande to Campamento Italiano, with our full packs
- Leave our big packs at Italiano, and take day packs to head up the valley toward Mirador Britanico
- Return to Italiano and pick up our full packs
- Hike another kilometer or so to Campamento Frances, where we’d make camp for the night
Leaving Paine Grande, the hiking was absolutely gorgeous–but difficult, because the winds were unrelenting. Most of the walk was very exposed, the sun baking us while the wind buffeted us around in our big, ungainly packs. It was slow going, especially on the steeper portions, as we grappled with all our extra weight.
We made it to Italiano around 1:30 and, after meeting with the park ranger there, tried to quickly drop our packs and start heading up into the valley, to give us the best chance of making it all the way to Britanico.
Into The Valley
The Mirador Britanico is at the end of the valley, with Mirador Frances part of the way up. We thought the guide boards at Italiano said 1.5 hours to Frances, and 2.5 to Britanico. And it did say that. But it meant Britanico was another 2.5 hours beyond Mirador Frances.
We didn’t know that until we got to Mirador Frances–an incredibly steep hike up the valley wall over loose rock. With a lot of grumpy looking Europeans coming down the trail that we passed. We couldn’t get an hola in return to save our lives. Erika commented on how grumpy everyone seemed, and wondered if that meant anything.
Oh it did: it meant everything sucked up at Mirador Frances. But up until then, we had astonishing views of the Glacier Frances, which sits high on the valley-side of the Paine Grande. A few times we were able to hear the glacier cracking and popping. It’s pretty amazing to hear those pops echo across the valley.
It was pretty windy the whole way up, only getting worse the higher we went. Despite the wind and the steep terrain, it only took us about an hour to get to Mirador Frances, and we felt inspired to keep going. We struck up a conversation with a random couple up there, who were the first to help clue us into the fact that Britanico was 2.5 hours from there, not from the bottom. Hrmm. That changes the math… but we still thought we’d try to go a little further. As we started to get spit on by a slight drizzle of rain, we bid the couple good bye and continued up the valley.
We got maybe 10 meters? Maybe? We were barely out of sight of the Mirador, and a hurricane-force gale stood us up, that we could not walk through. The mountain had decided! We were not going any further. Thoroughly freaked out as we struggled to stand on the steep, sheer ridge, we turned around as the spit of rain started to pick up.
That rain chased us down the whole valley as we descended, slowly picking up. When we returned to Italiano, we were in desperate need of lunch, so we stopped to eat and hope that the rain passed us by.
Winter Had Come
People commonly say it’s not unusual to experience all four seasons in one day in Torres del Paine. This was the first day that was true for us. Earlier in the day, on the hike from Paine Grande, we were desperately stripping down to short sleeves, wishing we’d had shorts, and overheating. Now we were sitting at Italiano, huddled in our full coats, in the cold rain that felt on the verge of snow.
That rain did not pass us by. We had a fully unpleasant 30-40 minute hike from Italiano to Campamento Frances in cold, windy rain. Then we got the opportunity to practice setting up our tent in the rain! Maybe someday we’ll get to set it up in nice conditions.
We finished setting up camp right as the showers became available, so we were able to basically be first in line for them. It’s a good thing too: apparently the hot water went out a couple hours later. Good thing that wind and rain chased us off the mountain!
Our night at Frances was the only night we didn’t have dinner provided by one of the refugios, so we’d brought makings for our own dinner. After showers, we went to the cooking shed to put together the delicious soup that Erika had planned. It was fun talking with the other people cooking at the same time, some of which were commenting on the vegetables we were cutting up and the soup we were making. I think they were jealous. I’m even more confident they were wondering why we’d hike all of that stuff all the way in.
We got back to the tent, freezing cold and wet, to get some sleep. We didn’t have to deal with the wind that night, but instead the sound of the rain falling on the tent all night long.
Day 4: A Brutal Destruction of our Bodies and Spirits
Maybe it was being out of the wind, maybe it was the sheer exhaustion, maybe we’d figured out this whole living in a tent business. Whatever it was, we both slept great, and woke up well rested and ready for the day of hiking ahead of us.
Which was good, because this was to be the hardest day of the trip. The plan for the day was a hike of around 13 miles to our next campsite, Campamento Chileno. However, the entire hike would be with our full packs. No day packs this time! It was going to be a rough day, and we knew we just had to take it slowly and get our way through it. An earlier start wouldn’t hurt, either.
Thankfully, it had stopped raining so we were able to take down the tent in decent weather. We did that first, got our packs together, then headed down to the shed to cook breakfast. While doing so, we started talking to the guy across from us, a very friendly, energetic hiker from Sydney, Australia named Ben. Per usual, we traded stories of our thoughts and experiences with the hikes in the park. He had the same hike as us ahead of him, but it was quickly evident from talking to him about his previous hikes that we wouldn’t all be going at quite the same rate… he could probably lap us.
We were also joined at breakfast by another couple that we’d recognized from various points in the trip. The first night, checking into Paine Grande, they were checking in just before us. We remembered them because his last name was Stern, but when he said it we thought he’d said Sturm. We saw them multiple times the next day on the hike to and from Grey glacier. So we told them about all this, traded names properly (Jack and Jeanmarie) and met for real this time, and spent breakfast talking with them. Their hiking pace sounded much more similar to our own than Ben’s.
Away to Refugio Cuernos
After finishing up breakfast, cleaning dishes, and going to the restrooms, it was finally time to get this hike underway. What the… 10:20?! Again?!?! We really, truly suck at this. Sigh… so much for that early start.
The general plan for the day was a hike that sort of broke into three parts:
- A 2 mile hike to Refugio Cuernos
- 6 miles to the point that the trail splits, and we would take the “shortcut” to Refugio Chileno
- Another 5 miles from there to Chileno
I realize now I’ve been remiss in formally introducing a couple of our fellow travelers! They feature very prominently in this day, so it’s important you get to meet them! Though, they’ve spent all week with us; all trip, even. Please, meet Franz and Helga:
Hi Franz and Helga! That’s Franz on the left there, and Helga on the right. Helga alternately goes by Bertha or Olga, too. It really depends on the day.
Franz and Helga are, for better and very much for worse, our constant companions. We spend a lot of time carrying them, watching out for them, digging through them, packing them, unpacking them. This day, we had 13 long, difficult miles to spend with them. They depended on us to get them to Camp Chileno and we, well, we were stuck with them.
We headed out (late as hell, as I already made clear), and with it being day 3 of hiking, it wasn’t long before Franz and Olga made their presence very known, and overstayed their welcome. The first portion of our hike was, supposedly, 2 miles to Refugio Cuernos. This portion took us right around 2 hours with a few stops. Two hours! This was really slow by our standards, even with Franz and Bertha tagging along. The terrain was somewhat difficult, but not 1-mile-per-hour difficult.
We’d talked about this with Ben, Jack, and Jeanmarie at breakfast too: none of us have any confidence in any of the distance/time estimates we’ve read about the trails in the park. We all talked about how portions that are said to be a particular distance take us far longer, or far shorter, than hiking that distance should. Erika and I also would look at what our phones estimated our daily distance to be, and it would never really align well with what the distances were supposed to be. I don’t expect the phone tracking to be terribly accurate really, but I mean… 25%-33% different from the documented trail distances?!
I don’t want to be all negative, because the hike was truly beautiful. Soon after leaving Campamento Frances, you come out of the trees and the trail parallels the huge Lago Nordenskjöld. It’s a beautiful view, which is great because a majority of the day’s hiking is alongside this lake.
The other thing we realized once we’d climbed up out of the trees that Campamento Frances is set in, was that all the rain we’d dealt with yesterday, was all snow high on Cerro Paine Grande! Looking back at the Cerro, and Glacier Frances on it, we could see all the new snow which was gorgeous:
The good news about this portion of the hike was:
- It was mostly downhill
- We quickly forgot about freezing our asses off at Campamento Frances! It was as hot as hell
It was indeed almost all downhill, and we descended… a lot. All the way to the shores of the Lago Nordenskjöld, actually:
Weren’t we just hundreds of feet above this lake? Yes, yes we were. For a little while, now, we had to walk along the shores of the lake, and… my god, the winds! All morning while hiking, we could see the winds sweeping up water from the lake, the water making clouds of mist as they blew in waves over the surface. Now that we were lakeside, and no longer sheltered by the rocks or trees, we were getting the winds full force. Also, we were now getting all that mist. I think I got it worse than Erika, as I quickly got drenched while we were lakeside. A couple times through here, we had to stop and hunker down because the winds were too much to move in, weighted down by Franz and Bertha.
After slowly making our way along the lake, the trail moved away from the shore some and started to climb into the hills again. Fortunately, it was shortly after that we finally saw Camp Cuernos just ahead of us, and we were thrilled. This portion of the hike really felt like it took forever, and we were hopeful that our pace could quicken after taking a break at camp.
Slogging our way to the Chileno Shortcut
After spending some quality time away from Franz and Olga, and snacking on some trail mix, we took up our friends and started to dig into the next portion of the hike. Immediately after leaving Cuernos, the trail goes steeply, steeply up hill, quickly climbing far above the campsite. Franz and Helga were killing us while the sun baked us. The trail continued to climb. And climb. And climb. And climb. In no time, we were just as high above the lake as we’d been in that earlier picture, and the climbing didn’t stop there.
This portion of the hike was murderous. Franz and Helga were the recipients of frequent cursing and awful name calling, we sweated relentlessly as it was as hot out as we’d felt in weeks, and that gale that we could barely stand in had petered away to a breeze and then nothing at all. Because you know, a refreshing breeze, that’d be nice. But you can’t have nice things here. Only torture and pain.
Climbing in this portion was incredibly steep, and we moved at a snails pace. I’ve done plenty of very difficult hikes in my life, but everything combined: 3 days of hiking, plus the scorching sun, plus Franz and Olga, plus the straight uphill… this was probably the hardest one I’ve done.
My God, When will it End?!
As the hours ticked by (and the miles did at a much slower rate), I was losing my mind. I was getting doubtful we’d make it to camp in time for the dinner we’d paid for. Erika joked that we’d already set the tent up in wind and rain, today we’d get the chance to do it in the dark! It wasn’t funny because it seemed like it might be true.
I yearned for some sort of sign to give us a distance estimate, as unreliable as they were, but there weren’t any. We just continued on, hoping the split in the trail would show up soon so we’d have some idea of where we were.
And finally it did! Looking at the clock, suddenly it seemed like we may make dinner after all! We still had a ways to go, but it seemed like there should be enough time. Hurray! With renewed spirits, we finally took a lunch break, then continued on, hopeful that the recent flatter terrain would continue.
We were making better time now, with the worst of the steepness seemingly behind us. Plus, most of the trail all day had been large, loose rocks, which made footing tough; that was done now too! It was mostly flat, softer dirt. Erika was knocking out a quick pace and chirped happily about how great these new trail conditions were.
“Oh!” she exclaimed, literally immediately after saying that, and came to a stop. Ahead of us now sat about 50 feet of pretty much bog, with footprints going off in dozens of directions, none of which seemed the right way to go.
We just stood there for minutes, our tired brains contemplating this and trying to find a path through.
“This is the new hardest thing I’ve seen here,” I said.
Erika bravely pushed ahead, picking a careful path. She made it about halfway through before she paid the price: an uneasy step taken, she slipped off a log and sunk one foot calf-deep into the bog.
“Ohhhhh god!” she moaned.
She’d go down one more time before fully making it across. Somehow, I sneaked through relatively unscathed, using what seemed to be the last of my energy to balance Franz and myself as we tip-toed across.
Unfortunately, Torres del Paine had plenty more punishment for us. Shortly after crossing the bog, the trail turned back uphill, and continued relentless uphill forever. Literally, we’re still walking uphill now, weeks later. Erika is still having nightmares of hiking uphill. It’s apparently our cross to bear.
I’ll be honest, this portion of the trail sucked. It wasn’t nearly as scenic (I mean… by Torres del Paine standards anyway) as everything else we’d done, the trail felt lazily blazed, it was brutally uphill and scorching hot. I know I’ve complained about the difficulty in a few other spots in the park, but this is the only part that I truly did not like.
Finally Rejoining the Main Trail
After forever, we started to see people off a ways in front of us. It was too late in the day for people to be coming down our trail with any hope of making it to Cuernos camp behind us, but we realized what it was: we had reached the main trail! We were seeing the many day-hikers coming back down from seeing Las Torres and heading back down to exit the park. We rejoined this trail and rejoiced that we must be close now.
The path just continued uphill.
Of course it did. Why wouldn’t it? Except now on the main trail, off to our right was a gaping canyon, and we were now exposed to the winds. Weren’t we just dying of heat exhaustion, like, 90 seconds ago? Because now we were stopping to put our long-sleeves, and all our coats, and our gloves, and our hats, back on. Winter was back!
After having no wind for so many hours, the wind now felt especially powerful. Also, terrifying! We were exhausted, and we had a sheer drop to our right into the Canyon of Death™. I had horrible visions of a gale catching Franz and/or Helga broadside, lifting our weakened bodies off the ground and plummeting us into the canyon. We hung close to the left side of the path, against the hill, and forced all the day-hikers coming down to go around us on the scary side. We’re bigger, deal with it.
Camelot!
There it was! We came over a hill and could finally see Chileno below us! Wait… below us?! We briefly complained about the fact this downhill was going to turn into an uphill tomorrow on the way out. But never mind that now: there’s the camp!
We made our way down as quickly as we could, found our way to the check-in window for the campsite, and… there was no one there. Hello? HELLO?! This was all in keeping with the trends of the day. We waited, we knocked, we waited, and finally someone came.
“Well, I have two options for you,” he said. “I can give you this platform, where you can set up your tent. Or, I have a 2-person tent set up you guys can have.”
I blinked slowly, staring blankly as I processed that. “Uh… we want the tent that’s set up.” Did he just say we won’t have to set up a tent tonight, or take one down tomorrow? My god thank you sir! You are a saint!
“Here, I’ve also got welcome drinks for you guys. You can get wine, or Pisco sours.”
I think we nearly wept.
The pain and unhappiness of the day well behind us now, we went excitedly to our tent, dropped off our things, went to get showers, then headed to get our much needed welcome drinks and dinner.
Cheers!
Day 5: Finally–Las Torres!
Going west-to-east, like we were, means you finish up the trip with finally seeing (or attempting to see, anyway) the park’s namesake. Some hikers get up super early and hike up in the dark, in order to see the Torres at sunrise. We were resolutely not doing that, and so didn’t need to wake up terribly early, since we didn’t have a tent to take down, and our breakfast was at 8am.
Oh, our reservation at this campsite included 3 meals: dinner last night, breakfast this morning, and a lunch which they would give us to take with us. Sounds great (and was!), but this night was our most expensive night of our entire trip. By far. Not the trip to Torres, I mean our ENTIRE trip through South America. To stay in a tent!
Anyway, we got our stuff together and got down for our breakfast, and picked up our lunch boxes. We ran into our friend Ben as we were getting ready after breakfast. He’d gotten up super early to hike up to the Torres to try seeing them at sunrise, but… didn’t have much luck, he said. We looked out the window toward the Torres, and the weather still didn’t look great, as the Torres were shrouded in clouds. Bleh. Well, it had an hour and a half or so to clear up for us, let’s see how it goes!
Our day of hiking wasn’t to be anywhere near as difficult as the previous day. Our basic plan was:
- Head up the hill about 1.5 hours to see the Torres, with just our day packs
- Come back down to the campsite and pick up Franz and Helga
- Hike about 5 miles down the mountain back to the park entrance, and take a bus back to Puerto Natales
After the difficulty of yesterday, not having to take Franz and Olga uphill was going to be wonderful.
We headed out, and the weather down at our campsite was perfect, at least. The winds were light, it was nice and warm and getting warmer! The start of the hike was lovely too, some gentle up-and-down through the woods. The hike ended yesterday fully uphill and exposed, and we’d worried that’s what the whole day today would look like. The fact that we were in the woods was great news.
Shortly after starting, we ran into our friends Jack and Jeanmarie, on their way back down. Holy shit, you’d gotten an early start! I said to them. They’d stayed the night all the way down at the bottom of the trail, where we’d be finishing our day today, and apparently had woke up at 2:30 in the morning to hike up to see the Torres at daybreak! Two-thirty!! They said the full moon was out and lit the path well, but still! We talked to them for a few more minutes before saying goodbye and continuing our climb.
We were getting warmer still, and had to stop shortly after to take off more layers. This is only notable because, before too long, things would change greatly once again. We got up out of the trees, into the more exposed sections of the trail. The last half mile of the hike was basically a rock scramble up an exposed rock field leading up to the Torres. And it was when we got into this exposed area that the weather decided to turn. Someone turned the winds back on, and then the rain started. Slowly, at first, but more and more as we got more and more exposed.
Dear reader, I’ll be honest, we had a moment after the rain started to pour, when we needed to stop to, once again, apply layers, and I was frozen to the bone, and I was done. Just done. I wanted to go back down, I wanted out, I wanted a hot cup of coffee. It was a dark time. To be fair, with how bad the weather had gotten, there wasn’t much chance of seeing the Torres when we got to the top, anyway.
Erika convinced me to keep going, and while shivering I re-layered and we continued up in the pouring rain.
There is a ‘trail’ marked in this area, but as I’d said, it’s basically just a rock scramble. So, you really just do your best to pick your own path up. It’s tedious, as a lot of the rocks are loose, so you have to choose your footing carefully. Also, it’s incredibly steep. And did I mention it was bitter cold and pouring? It was bitter cold, and pouring.
We slowly slogged our way up, inching closer, and finally, FINALLY… Las Torres!
God damnit.
It was still raining, and we were frozen, and pretty hungry. So, like everyone else who was up there at that time, we found some rocks to hide under to shield ourselves as much as we could from the wind and rain. Erika got out our trail mix, and we snacked. And waited. And waited some more. They say if you get to the Torres and it’s cloudy, just give it half an hour, because the weather up there tends to change drastically and quickly.
After waiting a while, we were finally rewarded… with a rainbow!
This really was pretty awesome, and did at least make the whole thing worth it. But we waited a little longer and they did come out of hiding:
Sort of. It would have to do! It could have been better, but this was still pretty great.
As we were getting our last few pictures, a guy asked Erika if she could take a picture of him and his three friends. Of course, she said, and he moved to hand his DSLR over to her.
“Oh, you know how to use these better than I do,” she said to me, suggesting I take the picture instead.
“Look,” the guy said helpfully to Erika, “you just point it at people, and then you push the button.”
All of us died laughing.
“Oh! Is that what you do!” Erika sarcastically replied as I took the camera from the guy. “Well here, here’s people!” she said, striking a pose. I pointed the camera at her and pushed the button.
“Diiiiiick!” she said, and the four guys cracked up.
I took a few pictures for them, and the guy came to take a look at them.
“Yeah, I can work with this. This one is my favorite though.” He showed me the viewfinder, with the picture of Erika on it. “I’m going to be going through my pictures in 40 years and come across this and think, ‘that’s the woman that called me a dick!'”
We talked with them a bit longer to hear about them and their trip. They were from all over–Alabama, Kentucky, and Damascus, Maryland (small world) were the places I remember–and had served together in the military overseas years ago. Now, they don’t see each other much, but get together once a year for some big overseas trip.
“Then we realize we really can’t stand each other.”
We got them to return the favor and get a couple pictures of Erika and me. The wind decided to kick back up as we were on the rock, threatening to push us into the lake!
Fortunately we managed to stay dry (well… we stayed out of the lake, anyway).
We bade the guys farewell, as we needed to get started back down… it looked like the weather was turning again, and we wanted to get down before the rain could find us again.
Chased by the Rain
The good news was we got down the steep rock scramble rain free! The bad news was… the rain pretty much started immediately after that part. We cinched up our coats and just had to live with wet pants and the sound of rain on our hoods.
This portion of the hike was really fast for us. We flew back down to Camp Chileno, by which time the rain had stepped back up to a steady downpour. And there were Franz and Bertha, patiently waiting under an overhang, eager to rejoin us. We didn’t share their eagerness.
When we started down with our friends now in tow, we were horrified to be reminded that we had to start with an uphill. It drove us to a crawl. I didn’t know if Erika would make it. Her knee was bothering her a good bit. We were falling apart in the 11th hour!
We trudged on in the rain as eventually the uphill vanished, and we were just left with a steep downhill for many miles. We slowly out-walked the rain, and eventually could see our goal at the bottom. We were so close! The terrain flattened out, we headed into a cattle grazing area, passed the Hotel Las Torres, and arrived at the shuttle that would take us to the park entrance. We’d finished the W!
Sitting in motorized transport had never felt so good.
Recovering back in Puerto Natales
We got back to the Hospedaje Costanera, our hotel we’d stayed at before our trip, and where we’d left our things. The lady there greeted us warmly and happily, and was happy to hear us complain about how wet and cold the day had been. After catching up with her, we dropped off our things, took quick showers, and went out for dinner.
All day long, we’d pushed ourselves on by talking about the pizza and wine we’d have that night. There was only one place in town we were looking to go for dinner: a restaurant we’d already gone to twice while we were in Puerto Natales.
The place just has two large community-style tables for seating. We asked for a spot for two and were seated somewhere in the middle of one of the tables.
Right next to Ben, the hiker we kept seeing.
We caught up with him, but even better, we ended up talking with a Chilean family of four seated to our other side. The mother, Fabiola, started talking with Erika. Fabiola didn’t have much English, so she and Erika talked in Spanish, and I just did my usual understand-but-can’t-contribute bit. Instead I ended up talking with Fabiola’s son, Fabian, who had slightly more English than I have Spanish. We had a hilarious, wonderful time trying talk, with my broken Spanish and his broken English.
It was great. And a wonderful end to our Torres del Paine adventure.
What’s Next?
No rest for the weary! We already had a bus the next day, that we’d booked over a week before, to bring us to the end of our adventures in Chile. We spent just under a month in Chile total, and it was fantastic. We had great food, great drink, met great people and saw and experienced incredible things in Patagonia. It was sad to be leaving, but we had so many exciting things ahead of us.
Our bus trip was to be a 6-hour ride that took us to El Calafate, Argentina. We spent the morning re-packing Franz and Helga with all the stuff we’d left behind before the Torres trip, then said goodbye to the owners at the Hospedaje Costanera. Seriously, if you’re in Puerto Natales, the Costanera is a great base camp. The beds are comfortable, the shower is hot, and they put together a lovely breakfast. And they’re just incredibly nice and welcoming.
Goodbye Chile! And if you made it this far, thank you so much for reading about our Torres del Paine trip! Come back soon to hear about our visit to El Calafate and the famous Perito Moreno glacier there!
